In only its second year, Trail Madness is a nice, intermediate distance trail race operated by Fleet Feet Tulsa. The race offers 4K, 8K, and 16K distances with the 16K being two loops on the 8K course.

The real draw to the race for me, beyond the obvious home team trails, is the mid-day start time. In 2014, the race started at noon, and this year, the race started at 1:00 PM. I start almost all of my training runs around 12-1 PM so it makes the race a comfortable relaxing day as opposed to a 3 AM alarm clock day.

What's great (or terrible) about a race in Oklahoma in early March is you have no idea what you're going to get from the weather. In 2014, I believe it was sunny with temperatures in the low-60's. This year, Trail Madness lived up to its name by offering a course with a couple inches of snow and ice covering the trails. The end result was actually better than what I thought we were going to experience. The weather forecast even just 48 hours out made it look like Trail Madness was going to become Mud Madness.

If you're not an Oklahoma native, you may not know that Oklahoma doesn't handle snow and ice well. As a result, a lot of runners dropped out of the race either due to travel issues or just common sense that others of us lack.

The snow and ice may also have affected the race preparation. For instance, there were no porta-potties, only the small Turkey Mountain bathrooms. I believe Fleet Feet usually brings in at least 5 for events like these so I'm wondering if the weather played a role. There were also fewer volunteers at the water stops than in other Fleet Feet races I've attended, and I noticed they were asking for more volunteers as late as Saturday night before race day. Neither issue affected the race, though.

The course was extremely well marked. At no point during the race did I question whether or not I was on course. At a couple of different times running in groups of 2 or 3, one person would follow the trail instead of the tags, and others of us would pull them back on course, but it would have been obvious to anyone lost that they needed to turn around. There were probably green tags every 10 feet on average with traffic directors at the water stop entries and exits and yellow tape to discourage trips onto the wrong trails.

The route chosen for the course was another good one. It didn't benefit my incline running as much as last year's, but it provided a good balance between incline and descent, technical and non-technical. The way it was structured led to a fairly exciting race if you were keeping track of my position and those around me. I passed the eventual 4th place finisher 3x, all on steep inclines, and he passed me 2x holding me off for a 3 second advantage at the finish. It looked like 1st and 2nd for the 16K were pretty close as well.

Last but not least, Fleet Feet Tulsa stepped up with more race swag this year. Like last year, everyone received a t-shirt, but this year they added a really nice finisher's medal. There were also overall and age group awards for the 4K and 8K, and they seemed to be handing out awards to *all* of the 16K finishers.

Also, if you haven't run a Fleet Feet Tulsa race before, you may not know that race pictures are usually free. They won't always get a picture of you, but more often than not, they will get at least one. It's up to you to make the picture a good one, a skill which I do not possess. Might have something to do with my face. Hmm...anyway, even after a day standing out in the cold taking the pictures, they spend their Sunday afternoon uploading them to PhotoBucket and making a race video.

If you think you might enjoy running trails, I can't recommend Trail Madness enough. There are not many trail races that will give you a 4K distance to cut your teeth on. You will also find every pace under the rainbow with finishers ranging from 7:00 min/mile up to 25 min/mile. And the best part of all...no early morning alarm clock.